Beaune
"I went to Beaune for the wine and came away thinking mostly about the hospital that gave it away for free."
The wine capital of Burgundy, encircled by ramparts and vineyards, where a fifteenth-century charity hospital with a glazed tile roof turned out to be more moving than any of the wine tastings.
Beaune is the self-declared wine capital of Burgundy, ringed by ramparts and, beyond them, by some of the most sought-after vineyard land in the world — Corton, Pommard, Volnay all sit within a short drive. We tasted plenty, wandered the Marché aux Vins, and none of it left as strong an impression as the one building I hadn’t researched at all before arriving: the Hôtel-Dieu.
A hospital built out of guilt and grief
The Hôtel-Dieu de Beaune was founded in 1443 by Nicolas Rolin, chancellor to the Duke of Burgundy, and his wife Guigone de Salins, as a free hospital for the poor, funded partly, according to local guides, by Rolin’s own desire to atone for a career of ruthless political dealing. What survives is a working masterpiece of Burgundian Gothic architecture — a multicoloured glazed tile roof in geometric diamond patterns that has become one of the most photographed images in France, and inside, the Grande Salle des Pauvres, a vaulted ward lined with curtained four-poster beds where patients were treated, in remarkable comfort for the era, right up until 1971. Walking through the ward, still furnished as it would have been for the sick poor of medieval Beaune, affected me more than I expected a museum stop to.
Wine that funds a hospital’s future
The Hôtel-Dieu still owns vineyard parcels donated by grateful patients and patrons over the centuries, and every November it holds one of the world’s most prestigious charity wine auctions, the Vente des Vins des Hospices de Beaune, whose results are watched closely as a bellwether for Burgundy’s entire vintage. We happened to be there a few weeks before the auction and could see the town gearing up — banners strung across the ramparts, cellars preparing barrels for tasting. We spent our last afternoon walking the top of the old fortified walls, a green, tree-lined loop around the entire old town, looking down at rooftops and, beyond them, the vine rows that had funded a five-hundred-year-old hospital and were still funding it now.
When to go: Late September through October for harvest season and, if your timing is very lucky, the November Hospices de Beaune auction weekend, when the whole town turns into a wine festival.